Week 8 - Changes in Practise

Week 8 - Changes in Practise

The past 32 weeks has certainly been a journey with straight flowing roads, many speed bumps and many twists in the road where I am left thinking, processing the information I have read and looked at from week to week.  Even when not sitting completing an assignment / blog, I am often reflecting over what I have seen and always thinking how can I make improvements for the children in my class and at our school.

Osterman and Kottkamp (2015, pg 2) stats that we know from research that learning is most effective when people become personally engaged in the learning process and I feel this has been the case over the past 32 weeks.  In the first 16 weeks I felt like a new student in my class as I had no colleagues with me and I had to work and collaborate with others.  At the end of the night I always went home on a high as I thought - 'wow, I did that'. Some of the experiences we completed were also new.  The children in my class knew I was completing this and the next morning were always interested to know what I had been doing.  

Such a range of activities kept me interested and in many different formats.

The Mindlab study complimented the Practising Teaching criteria.  3 areas that I would like to comment on are - 

Criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice.

Criteria 6: Conceptualise, plan, and implement an appropriate learning programme.

Criteria 11: Analyse and appropriately use assessment and information, which has been gathered formally and informally.


Criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice.
I have always been interested in latest developments in Education but becoming more aware of 21st Century thinking skills, having to include such models as Kotters model, SMAR model in a practical way has embedded strategies for me.

Criteria 6: Conceptualise, plan, and implement an appropriate learning programme.
I thought my programme was for children to work on in an individual manner but this was highlighted to me that I was giving the same information but just in a different format.  My programme has changed to reflect a collaborative, problem solving, critical thinking approach.

Criteria 11: Analyse and appropriately use assessment and information, which has been gathered formally and informally.
For many years now we have been asked to complete a Teacher as an Inquiry, whichI have always done but looking at it more in depth from paper 3 I feel 2017's TAI will be more in depth with a more complete analysis reflecting change to the students.

Nobody said this was going to be easy but I enjoyed the thought provoking ideas over the 32 weeks.  I still struggle putting information online, I can see the point and instead of being one of those 'lurkers' it is good to give back and raise my opinion.  I would like to take the rest of this year exploring Jo Bolar as she was someone I read a lot of information about during my lit review.  I also want to take the time to consolidate my new found strategies and information into the classroom to the people that matter the most - the kids.

Thank you.





References - 
Ministry of Education (nd). Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning . Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/

Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Cornwin Press, Inc. Retrieved on 7th May, 2015 from http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/RefPract/Osterman_Kottkamp_extract.pdf

Week 7 -

I really enjoyed creating my map as there were things and people involved in my life that I had never thought about how they influenced the way I am professionally.  It showed me that yes I do have a lot of specialist professionals coming through my door of the classroom and as I thought about them, it made me reflect on how they influenced my classroom programme for all my children.

Andrews (1990) defines interdisciplinary collaboration as occurring "when different professionals, possessing unique knowledge, skills, organisational perspectives, and personal attributes, engage in coordinated problem solving for a common purpose" (cited in Berg-Weger &. Schneider, 1998). 

The video from the Thomas McDonagh Group discussed how educators and learners should have a sense and understanding of people and happenings around you, they call this Apathic Horizon, (Thomas McDonagh Group, 2011).  I thought about this as I was thinking about my colleagues.  We are a small rural primary school and as I started to think about them in a more indepth way, I came to realise our staff have many strengths and passions that we should all be utilising within our programmes.  We need a discussion about how we can incorporate everyones strengths rather than feeling we have to teach everything but would be on a more superficial level.  

We have begun to think about this in our programme as my colleague has a strength on Science and we have been joining together to work through some Nature of Science activites.  This has also been some of the best professional development for me - to observe her in action and the children benefit from her knowledge too.

In her paper The Natural Flow of Learning, Dr Julia Atkin (1994) looks at a connected curriculum as a means of making learning relevant and concludes that we need to approach the curriculum in a way that "connects the powerful ideas, models and processes within and across traditional disciplines; a curriculum which connects with, and then extends, the learners' personal, experiential knowledge."  Thinking of this reference it makes me reflect on working to our passions and strengths and working smarter within our school.



References - 

Atkin, J. (1994). The Natural Flow of Learning: Conditions which enhance and maximise learning. Retrieved from www.learning-by-design.com/papers/conds_learning.pdf

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the 

     Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved 

     from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf

Thomas McDonagh Group. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA

Week 6 - Professional Social Online Networks

Activity 6: Using social online networks in teaching and professional development 

The use of technology has grown in an exceeding rate in our classrooms with devices being a more accessible to school.  In my classroom there has been a real shift away from using the devices - ipads and chrome books for 'games' to activities that involve more creating, problem solving and sharing / teaching others.  

Don't get me wrong there is still a place for those but there seems to be more buy in from the children when they see their final product on the screen being shared with others from all over the world.

As a school we use Facebook and our blogs to connect with families.  I am just trialling Seesaw at the moment with the hope to include parents next term.  As a class we use twitter and skype to connect and broaden our horizons. We have a private class account with You Tube as many videos are shared to the parents using this.   As a professional I use Twitter, many pages on Facebook, electronic publications such as Mind Shift, Pinterest and now Google+ to build my scope on teaching ideas.  At my school we all have our own Teacher Action Inquiry (TAI) that drive our professional development and teacher registration requirements. As a result of this week’s activity, I now realise the value of social networking and social networking is now going to be a larger part of my TAI process. We have been asked to create our TAI as a digital document and up to now it has just seemed like another thing to think about as paper is easy but I am sure this is my step going forward - to create my professional digital footprint.

I have found, particularly this year, the range and options of courses that are more to my interests and needs online.  I feel attending conferences, while beneficial for face to face and networking will become not as important to attend and I can do all of those things online and at a time that suits me, which is really important with having my own family to think of.  I think it is really important to still have a balance in your life no matter how interesting and stimulating your work is.

While using social media within the classroom, I am aware of what I can use as I have a class of younger children who are not yet 13 and many media sites have an age restriction on them.  I am aware many of these children have their own accounts at home but I will not endorse them at school.  Concerns about privacy, both for themselves and for their students, and about maintaining the class as a private space for free and open discussion, have been at the top of the list of concerns in all of reports conducted in Pearsons: Social Media for Teaching and Learning. (Seaman, 2013)

Through regular participation, I would improve my ability to self-direct my learning, which would motivate me continue my personal development (Melhuish, 2013). Social media networking would continue to make it possible to connect with people around the world that I would otherwise not communicate with (Sharples et al., 2016), and it brings the world to the children.

Social technologies can provide new opportunities to engage learners and many educators are discovering impactful strategies for using them in face-to-face, blended and online classrooms. (Seaman, 2013)

References - 

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 12 March, 2017 from https://app.themindlab.com/media/32455/view

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf

Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf

Week 5 - Practice - Laws and Ethics Influence

Our profession is a tricky one as we have worked hard for our degrees, been provisionally registered and been under the guiding hand or a mentor then build up our years in teaching.  Our parents / families in our school community know that but it still doesn't stop them questioning what or why we are doing things.  Sometimes we have to hold our tongues when suggestions are given to us or comments are made as that shows our professionalism. The reality is it is still an emotive job as we are working with children whose parents are, quite rightly biased.  

The Code of Ethics according to the Education Council of New Zealand for Certificated Teachers is the professional interactions of teachers are governed by four fundamental principles:

• Autonomy to treat people with rights that are to be honoured and defended.
• Justice to share power and prevent the abuse of power.
• Responsible care to do good and minimise harm to others.
• Truth to be honest with others and self.

We as teachers are also to show commitment to learners, parents / guardians, family / whanau, society and to the profession, (Education Council. n.d.) and I am certain that most teachers adhere to this. 

For the past 3 years we have been a BYOD school - optional from Year 4 to Year 8.  The children and the parents sign a code of conduct regarding the use of devices.  They also sign a form related to where they are happy for their children to be photographed.  This includes our newsletter, facebook page, website and newspaper.

I have one family who choose to not have their child's photograph on facebook for their own reasons.  They are happy for them to be published everywhere else.  

The issue we come across is that I know who the child is, along with all the other staff members but when being involved with public, community events we have had the instance happen that photos are taken and are published on our Community facebook page.  What we have to think about as a staff is when we know photos are to be taken do we let the community member know they can't take photos of a certain child or is that breaching privacy?  My thought it is breaching privacy but all I asked was, I saw the photos taken before they were published and then discretely asked for certain ones to be deleted.  This was not acting on any code of conduct but just common sense before a problem arose.

The negatives related to this was the parent could have been very upset with the school in thinking we don't take any notice of her requests when if it had happened it would have been a genuine mistake.  

This has got me to thinking about school camp. We are away in 4 weeks and during our parent session where we discuss expectations I have made the decision for the first year ever to discuss photo etiquette.  After teaching for 22 years this is another place the world is changing.  We have police vetted our parents and always discussed confidentiality on camp but now I need them to think about the photos they take and where they will be published.  I had a wonderful parent put photos on facebook last year but this year we will discuss sending them all to me and I will out them on a disc and give to families, then it will be the parents choice to where they share their photos.  

The questions recommended from Hall ( 2001) will help to guide my thinking process when discussing with the parents about camp.  The questions being - 

• “Which stakeholder should be given priority? Why?
• What restrictions are there to your actions?
• Which courses of action are possible?
• How should the course of action be implemented? “ (p.5)

It is not going to change camp or the amazing experiences that we have on camp but certainly is another level of our ever changing world in education.

References - 

Code of Ethics for Certified Teachers 

Retrieved from:https://the.org. etiquette/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-teachers-0

Hall, A. (2001) What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www. etiquette.govt. confidentiality/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers

Week 4 - Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness.

I grew up in rural Southland where my family ties to Scotland was very loud and proud with the sounds of bagpipes, highland dancing and the ode to the haggis!  Being at a rural school where all the children were from generational sheep farmers, my awareness of other cultures was very limited.  We had 1 or 2 families who identified with being Maori, who would come and go depending on the shearing season.

Now teaching in a similar rural setting I have noticed how dramatic the demographics of a rural community has become.  As my own children are being brought up in a similar lifestyle I can see their experience is truly enriched with the friends they are making that have come from all around the world.  Their eyes and emotions are more in tune with many different cultures, which is something I didn't have.

Being culturally responsive means caring for people, and caring for their learning. Bishop, (2012) As a teacher, this is something I endeavour to do in my classroom practice and teaching. As a teacher I do not accept the deficit and have the expectation that everyone will succeed and make progress to the best of their abilities and in their own style.

Our school does well -
One important part of cultural responsive pedagogy begins with student - teacher relationships and more importantly authentic caring which Savage etal (2011) describes as “Authentic caring entails getting to know students, attending to student input regarding teaching and learning, respecting students’ intellectual abilities, and valuing identities students bring into school from home”.

In our staff meetings we always dedicate a time to our priority learners and ESOL children. Our ESOL teacher has a major part in this and all staff are there. This way we can discuss the child in a more holistic way and look at how we as a school community can enhance the learning for this child. this is the benefit to being a small rural school.  Over time we all get to know our students and their families very well.

Research by Gay (2002) states there are five essential elements in culturally responsive teaching.  They are “developing a knowledge base about cultural diversity, including ethnic and cultural diversity content in the curriculum, demonstrating caring and building learning communities, communicating with ethnically diverse students, and responding to ethnic diversity in the delivery of instruction” (p.106).

Along with this, once a term we hold migrant meetings.  This involves the Principal, Board of Trustee reps, the ESOL teacher and a classroom teacher.   The families are welcome to bring their children and there is always food involved.  We discuss what is happening for the term, they tell us what we are doing well for their children and how we can develop what we have got to make it better for them.  Communication is the key to including all.

What we are continuing to develop - 
We know we have these great meetings with our families but what we have highlighted is that we still need to incorporate their strengths into our curriculum programme.  This would make the families feel they are even more involved, if they can share their knowledge and passions with our children.  This is something we are continuing to develop over 2017

With a focus to the Unitec Poutama we are still on step one as we need to incorporate more Maori knowledge concepts to our assessment process, yet looking at relationships we are demonstrating our own principles.

A real interesting and topical perspective, indigenous knowledge and being culturally responsive, on our ever changing landscape of children in our schools... one I think about often but sometimes unsure of whether I do enough in my practise but certainly something that is evolving over time.

References -

Source: Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Gay,G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2),106-116.

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198:

Week 3 - New Zealand Educational trends...

New Zealand Educational Trends

The New Zealand Education Review Office in 2012 has three areas for priority learners that we should all be focused on if students are to be at the heart of learning.

1. Shifting the focus to student centred
2. Responsive and rich curriculum
3. Using assessment information to know about, and plan for students' learning

I am going to focus on shifting the focus to student centred as I believe I was doing that until I read the article from ERO and realised there were many more elements to being student centred, which is great for my thinking and classroom practice.

Many educational environments are shifting the focus of their classrooms to being student centred but there needs to be an understanding from the staff involved to how this may happen.  To what this looks like and sounds like, to what this is like for the children and their families as this shift involves the students to become a partner in their learning.  This is a beneficial shift for Maori children as this helps provide good opportunities for them to bring what they know and their ways of knowing and making sense of the world.  (ERO, 2012)  In my situation our school community comprises of 24% migrant children therefore the same philosophy applies to them.

It involves the students taking on Leadership Roles with their learning.  They need to be involved with the planning process of the next steps, their goals, reporting on their progress to their parents.  We do discuss the next goals but I know I need to develop their learning rubrics so the children can identify their next learning step.

Teaching as Inquiry ERO, (2012) shows the connection between deliberate teaching and learning is not yet well developed.  It states the teachers are creating opportunities to learn and leaders are advocating this, many are not focussed the deeper more critical element of the relationship between achievement, progress and teaching.  To have this would be promoting accelerated learning opportunities.  A fine example to me was when I undertook the ALiM ( Accelerated Learning in Mathematics) programme in 2016.  I had always thought I was competent in teaching maths but I did struggle with how to get through to those children who historically weren't succeeding as they were coming through the years.  After the professional development we received and critically analysing our teaching practice, we were able to then develop a programme which was rigorous, stimulating and ultimately successful for our target group, of which were 20% migrant children.  Accelerated learning works best when teachers and learners try different approaches to teaching and learning which might benefit the students.

Many of my questions and thoughts relate around the idea that if we could be less obsessed with academic standards and qualifications and place more emphasis on values and attitudes to problem solving and life(Hood, 2015), would this create learners who are more equipped with life after school and make them reflect more on their passions to find success from different avenues?

References - 

Education Review Office. (2012).

ERO (2012) Teaching as Inquiry: Responding to learners.  Wellington: Education Review Office.

Hood, D. (2015) The Rhetoric and the Reality: New Zealand Schools and Schooling in the 21st Century Fraser Books.

Week 2 - Identify and evaluate the context of my practice.

Characteristics of our community -

We are a rural school with sheep and dairy farms surrounding us. Many of our children that attend are generational children whose parents and Grandparents have gone through the school as the younger generation take over the farm.  In our classrooms we are multilevelled and I can often have a child for up to 3 years and have siblings in the class.  We are seeing a change happen - due to more migrant workers coming into the district for farm work we have more South African and Filipino children attending. We are now 20% Asian children and employ a teacher to work with our ESOL children.  We are classed as a decile 9 but the doesn't seem to reflect our families in our Community now yet I know it is supposed to.

Culture of school - 

A climate of a school should be unique to any particular school and thats ok but it should be positive, and the culture is deeper, based off their values, how do they do things, how people treat each other.  (Warner, 2015).  I feel we have a positive climate at school.  Our children greet visitors by yelling our 'hello' in the playground as they enter the gat, they open doors for adults, they are polite to each other and there is a true feeling of whanau where older children help the younger children.  We have happy children, most of the time and they are working on strategies for those moments when things don't go their way.

Approximately 7 years ago we introduced a new mission statement and after consultation with our community we came up with, 

“Making an impact”

Whakahihi ana te haere - Walk tall – Be proud of myself, my school & my community

Whakahau ana te tu - Stand strong – Believe in myself, respect others & be honest

Whakahirahira ana te whainga - Aim high – Set goals and do what I can to achieve these

These statements, underpin our values which are interwoven into our classroom at all times. They are acknowledged and reminded of in our day book, certificates for assemblies, notes in our newsletters. Our children become exposed to our expectations when they enter our transition class attached to our local playgroup and are displaying these attributes throughout their school life.

I am not sure how you would measure it as we do get comments from visitors to our school but is hard to show as official evidence.

Our Principal is very respectful to we as teachers being Professionals and I know that respect is reciprocated as all the teachers work hard, are passionate about their role within the school.

Food for thought -

We love our South African and Asian families and the children are so happy all the time at school but it does pose a problem when trying to involve the families.

In our school we operate with 40 families and when you are trying to get people to come up for governance in Board of Trustee roles or to be on Home and School or fundraising committees is becomes harder and harder to 'spread the work load. Yet I suspect this is hard in any school community no matter what the size of the school.

How we try to get around this is to hold a new family session just after Gypsy Day on the first of June. This is when we traditionally gain new families from Dairying Contracts changing. We also hold a migrant meeting once a term. We phone all our families involved and send out emailed invitations, so they can translate them. Our Principal, ESOL teacher, a classroom teacher and a couple of Board members go and they talk about what is happening at school, explain things in the newsletter, ask the families what is going well, and how can we help them to make things easier.

Our families really appreciate these meetings and things are beginning to change. We now have one of our Filipino Dads on the Board and 2 parents have attended the Home and School meeting.

I believe after reading about the Norms, (Stoll,1998) we endeavour to use these ideas to making our school a safe, positive place for our learners. With a continued focus on our Statement the children will have these ideas placed in front of them all the time. This is always changing, improving as the students go through and as things influence and change from around you. Our staff is a small and stable staff which helps to create our culture. Staff are the consistent entity to build culture and climate as students are the piece of the puzzle that flow through it. (Warner, 2015)

References - 

Academy for SELinSchools. ( 2015, Apr 28).What is school culture and climate? [video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_NvhlcusQ

Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London.